


There Be Dragons

by Tassos



Category: due South
Genre: Community: fandom_stocking, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-05
Updated: 2011-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-14 11:08:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassos/pseuds/Tassos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lunch with Fraser is never easy.  Ray should really be used to this by now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Be Dragons

**Author's Note:**

> For Zaneetas
> 
> Beta thanks to girl_wonder

“Tell me again why we gotta be the ones doing this?” Ray shone his flashlight into a dark corner. “Don’t they got them zookeepers to do this?”

“Well, they do, Ray.” Fraser’s voice drifted over from further down the tunnel. While it wasn’t completely pitch black, the lights were so dim they might as well have been. “I simply thought that since we were here we should volunteer our services. After all —”

“Oh no,” Ray spun from his dark corner and shone his light on Fraser. He wasn’t in his mountie uniform today. Instead he wore his leather coat and sinfully tight jeans that were not going to get him off the hook today. No sir. “ _We_ were not here, Fraser. _You_ were here — for reasons that we still haven’t explored at this juncture — and I was going to meet you for lunch. And then go back to work. Not —” He waved his hands emphatically to encompass the insanity of what they were doing right now, the light from his flashlight spinning wildly around Fraser. Who was rubbing his eyebrow, now, Ray totally won this argument.

“I suppose you could look at it that way,” said Fraser. “Though you did voluntarily get out of your car.”

“Getting out of my car to look for you doesn’t mean I volunteered to wander around the Snake House.”

“We’re actually in the Small Mammal House.”

“Looking for a snake.”

“Actually, if you’ll recall, we’re looking for a dragon.”

Ray gave Fraser his evilest eye. “You said it was from the Snake House,” he said slowly.

“The actual name is the Reptile—”

“Fraser.” Ray raised his hand and Fraser, for once, shut up. It had taken a while for them to get to this point, where Fraser knew when talking was only going to end in a kick to the head and Ray knew that he better get out of there until he could think straight again. They stood, watching each other, in an increasingly awkward silence in which Fraser was still going to do whatever the hell he wanted and Ray wasn’t going to yell at him for it.

“Okay. Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go out there,” Ray pointed at the faint light at the end of the tunnel, “and find a hotdog. Then I’m going to go find the giraffes and eat my hotdog. I don’t want to know about the dragons — which I was pretty sure didn’t exist — No —” He held up a finger when Fraser opened his mouth to no doubt give him a fascinating explanation. “I don’t want to know.”

“I’ll just come find you when I’m done,” said Fraser.

“Yeah. Yeah, you do that.” Bad enough he’d agreed to help find a snake, but Ray was done with this dragon stuff.

So he went and got his hotdog and found a bench by the giraffes which weren’t too far off. If Fraser needed any saving from the dragon, well, Ray was close enough to hear him if he called. More to the point, he was close enough to hear him if he didn’t call, and he had one better than a sword.

Dragons. Ray glanced back over at the Small Mammal House. The main zoo was still open but the zoo staff was clearing out this section, herding folks along toward safer pathways. A couple of them tried to shuffle him off too, but he flashed his badge and they let him be.

Fraser had to be pulling one over on him. He did that sometimes because he thought it was funny. And okay, sometimes it was, Ray smiled, thinking of the thing with the egg and the banana and Canadian ideas about sex ed. But Fraser was skipping lunch with him and he didn’t do that unless this really was one of his crusades to make the world more Canadian, one good deed at a time. But the point, Ray bit viciously into his hot dog, was that Fraser was skipping lunch with him.

He stared at the _Small Mammal_ House — what was it with zoos and houses anyway — waiting for Fraser to appear, when he heard someone pad up to him. Of course, as soon as Ray had food, the furball showed up.

Except when Ray looked over, it wasn’t Dief.

Instead, a giant lizard was slithering its forked tongue at him.

“Aha!” Ray scrambled all the way onto the bench. The thing was huge! The size of an alligator, though with less teeth, and the tail — snapped out like a whip. “Nice lizard,” said Ray. “Fraser!”

The tail snapped again and this time caught Ray’s ankle so hard he fell against the back of the bench, a sharp stinging pain that felt like his ankle was broken.

“Fraser!” Ray shouted again, eyes never leaving the lizard whose beady little eyes never left his. Or maybe his hand.

“Ray!” He heard Fraser shout and a few others too, but he only really had attention for the lizard. Good thing too since the thing lunged at him! Ray jumped to the side and in a split second drew upon his experience of dealing with wolves and threw the rest of his hotdog at the lizard.

The lizard leapt after it with another snap of his tail.

Then Fraser was there with a lady zookeeper who had a pole with a loop on the end. With the lizard distracted, she easily caught it round the neck, jerking back slightly when the lizard figured out it was caught and went after her this time.

“Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray,” said Fraser, grabbing Ray’s arm and pulling him off the other end of the bench. Ray went and willingly, even let Fraser help him down because his ankle still hurt like a fucker. “Are you hurt?”

“Yes, I’m hurt!” Ray shouted, felling pretty legitimately cheesed off. “Is that your dragon, because I’m telling you, Fraser, this is not buddies. I come here—”

But Fraser was running his hands over Ray, not even listening to Ray. “Did it bite you?”

“—Expecting lunch, and I end up throwing my damn hotdog at monsters—”

“Ray, did it bite you?” Fraser was squatted at his feet now, checking the tear in his jeans and poking, quite painfully, at where the freaking dragon whacked him.

“No it didn’t bite me!” Ray snapped. Fraser looked up from his leg, wide eyed and worried which stopped Ray’s next rant in his throat. “What?”

“Are you sure?”

“That was his tail.”

Other zoo workers were running over, but the lady zookeeper had the lizard in hand now, carefully keeping her distance. If Fraser stayed on his knees much longer it was about to get a whole lot more embarrassing over here. Fraser of course, didn’t care and made Ray sit down so he could look at his ankle properly. Before Ray knew it, one of the vets was looking at him and he and Fraser were fussing, and talking over Ray like he wasn’t there. Ray only caught one word in ten as he tried to talk his way out of it — his ankle hurt but not so much anymore.

“Wait, what? Fraser, Fraser, Fraser —”

“Yes, Ray?”

“Did you just say that the longest anyone has survived a dragon attack is two days?”

Fraser did that thing where he really didn’t want to tell Ray the answer to that question because it would land him in hot water or possibly the couch, and don’t think that Ray wouldn’t. Of course not answering would land him in hot water too.

Fortunately, or not, the vet took care of answering for him. “Well, no more than a week certainly. Of course with antibiotics you’d probably be fine.”

Fraser scratched at his eyebrow. “Flesh eating bacteria often infect the wound and the prey goes into septic shock, which gives the komodo dragon the opportunity to shred it to pieces.” He looked at Ray and couldn’t seem to help adding, “It’s very dramatic.”

Ray glared. The zookeepers and the vet soon left, sensing the fireworks that were about to blow, and went about their zookeeping business with their freaking dragon. Fraser looked, what was the word… contrite, but he looked Ray in the eye, and when he opened his mouth to say something a couple times, he wisely shut it again.

“You didn’t think about maybe telling me this before we went poking around in dark corners?” Fraser always forgot that not everyone, and by everyone Ray meant himself because he was the only one crazy enough to follow Fraser around, lacked his self-preservation skills.

“I told you there had been an escape from the Reptile House that posed a threat to the zoo visitors,” said Fraser as if that was sufficient information for people who hadn’t grown up in a library. It’s one of Fraser’s most endearing and frustrating traits. One that wasn’t going to change anytime soon, and honestly, neither would Fraser dragging him into danger at the drop of a hat.

Fraser took a hesitant step closer. “I’m sorry, Ray.” It had taken a while to get to this point too, where apologies didn’t taste like sandpaper.

“You owe me a hotdog. Plus real lunch,” said Ray. Forgiveness had always been easy.

When Fraser smiled, Ray just let the rest go.

“So what were you doing here anyway?” he asked as they turned and fell into step together. Fraser bumped his shoulder, casually.

“Oh, Dief wanted to see the baby elephant,” he said.

“Dief did.”

“Oh yes, he’d never seen elephants before coming to Chicago, being an arctic wolf, and he’s really taken a liking to them,” said Fraser. “But I’m sure he’ll be sorry he missed you slaying the dragon, Ray.”

“Slay, huh?”

“Well, captured. Well really, helped capture —”

“I like slayed,” said Ray, grinning and bumping Fraser’s shoulder back. “Why don’t you stick with that story? Saint Ray the Dragon Slayer.” It appealed to the lapsed Catholic in him.

“Ray, I don’t think—”

“Fraser.”

“Dief will be very impressed.” Fraser had that little smile on his face, and his eyes were all lit up when he looked at Ray, and Ray knows, that Dief isn’t the only one.


End file.
